Thursday, April 6, 2017

Staunton, April 5 – Vladimir Putin’s
call for authorities in Russia’s regions – and especially those where
anti-regime protests occurred on March 26 – to organize anti-terrorist meetings
is so transparently political that it has offended many Russians who say they
should be allowed to grieve on their own and thus may backfire on the Kremlin.

But as more than one commentator has
pointed out, Putin’s motivations are transparent and have little or nothing to
do with anything but his own power: he wants meetings in places where the March
26 demos took place in order to show that he can bring out more people than
Aleksey Navalny did (kasparov.ru/material.php?id=58E3E9CAC4A14).

To the extent that such feelings grow, the
Putin regime’s efforts in this regard will backfire leading ever more Russians
to view the regime as concerned only about its own survival rather than the
welfare of the people. That is something the opposition has argued for a long
time: Now, by his clumsy and overreaching action, Putin has unintentionally
encouraged Russians to believe exactly that.